[Footnote 190: Innocent III. continued the work; he extended the obligation of acquiring knowledge among the priests. "The bishop will ascertain," says he, "the capacity of those on whom he confers holy orders. It is better to have a few who are learned to serve the altar than many who are ignorant." And in our own day the Roman College gives gratuitous instruction in the classics and in the higher sciences, theology, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, etc., which does not prevent the revolutionary journals from declaring the pontifical government an enemy of progress and of light.]
[Footnote 191: Ozanam, Le Christianisme chez les Barbares.]
And it is so truly the spirit of Christianity that schools are multiplied in proportion to its diffusion. Clovis hardly received baptism when schools were established even in his palace; [Footnote 192] the more fully kings were imbued with a Christian spirit, the more letters were protected and honored. Theodosius, who almost attained to sanctity by his penitence, decreed that masters, after teaching twenty years, should be ennobled with the title of count, and be on an equality with the lieutenants of the prefect of the pretorian guards; and Charlemagne, the great Christian emperor, established under his eye an academy, which, we are told, was called the Palatial School: the palace was consecrated to science, and its true name would have been the Scholastic Palace. [Footnote 193]
[Footnote 192: Dom Pitra, Rapport sur une Mission scientifique, 1850.]
[Footnote 193: Dom Pitra, Histoire de St. Léger, ix.]
II.
The Tenth Century.
We are not contradicted. Yes, in the first centuries the church favored knowledge; but there is an exception: from the ninth to the eleventh century, letters almost entirely disappeared, the light of knowledge was obscured, and this epoch is justly called the night of the middle ages.
It is not so; a multitude of witnesses prove how unfounded is this prejudice. [Footnote 194]
[Footnote 194: That is to say, the erudite men who have carefully studied this confused epoch and have arrived at the same conclusion, whatever their philosophical opinions: Littré and Ozanam, Daremberg and Villemain, Renan and Dantier, Hallam and Berrington, etc,]